The Internet Didn't 'Kill' Carly Rae Jepsen's Career

from the LEAVE-THE-INTERNET-ALONE!-*sob* dept

The Internet gets blamed for so much. This loose collective of millions of users and websites is blamed for everything from killing off major industries to turning the world's children into short attention span txt fiends. The Internet will kill art via piracy, we are assured repeatedly. A new generation of children will be raised by the wan glow of LCD monitors and nurtured by thousands of ethereal Facebook friends.

Tastemakers heard it, then moguls who were de facto tastemakers, and it spread to listeners who knew nothing about the singer except this beautiful thing she'd written. They fell in love at first listen. They gushed. They sang along. They recorded karaoke videos and public swoon mobs and re-enactments of its summer-love video. They sent it to No. 1 for seemingly the entire summer and sent its singer to what looked an awful lot like dazed stardom.

Doesn't all of that sound absolutely horrible? Apparently St. Asaph would prefer Jepsen wallowed in obscurity so that she never had to be disappointed by the fact that she had and lost fame. Instead, it's better if she never had it, if I'm following the logic here correctly.

Jepsen and her two bandmates recognized it was best to strike when the iron was still tepid and ventured into the studio with enough co-producers and songwriters to choke a "Tribute to Lou Perlman" compilation. Jepsen's debut album was released and promptly fell off the public radar, failing to surpass 100,000 sales. This sort of situation is hardly unique. Plenty of big hits have been followed by a loud sucking noise as fans rush off to examine the Next Big Thing, creating a temporary vacuum in their wake.

St. Asaph discusses the internet's well-chronicled role in Jepsen's rapid rise to fame, though, it's not so much the rise to stardom that concerns St. Asaph (and leads toward murder charges being brought against the Internet). It's what happened during the rise. In her estimation, the homicidal Internet took the spotlight off of the talented Jepsen and shone it on itself, taking something vital away from the actual artist with the endless stream of remixes, lip dubs, image macros, covers and other forms of audience participation.

This sounds counterintuitive; shouldn't it help Jepsen for thousands of people to remix, recreate and otherwise rejoice over her song? But the meme's not about Jepsen; it's about her song, and she is secondary... This is the problem Carly Rae Jepsen's facing: loving "Call Me Maybe" as a meme hasn't made people invested in her as a musician.

That may seem unfortunate, but it's hardly unique and it's hardly new. It certainly isn't an "Internet" problem. In fact, throw quotes around "problem" as well. Super-popular pop stars are rarely embraced as artists. They're embraced as temporary phenomena, a momentary distraction to be enjoyed until the next groundswell displaces them.

Long before the Internet was meming artists to death on a regular basis (and in broad daylight!), people were picking up and discarding pop phenomena nearly as quickly. (If you don't want a bunch of horrible songs stuck in your head, you might want to skip ahead to the next paragraph.) Remember the "Macarena?" Did anyone ever care about the musicians behind the devilishly circuitous hook or the "choreographer" that crafted a dance so easily emulated your grandmother has probably attempted it? How was the album, I ask rhetorically, as if anyone outside of the artists involved have ever listened to the entire thing? How about Right Said Fred, whose "I'm Too Sexy" took clubs by storm for an entirely unreasonable amount of time before vanishing into the pop ether? Lou Bega, temporary mambo king who finally hit it big with his 5th attempt? How about Jesus Jones, who had two singles hit the US Hot 100 but managed to leave the charts untroubled for the next four albums? Chumbawumba were a frickin' anarchist collective, and yet, all anyone in the US knows is they cranked out the perfect drinking song about drinking. The list could go on and on and that's only covering a small part of a single decade.

The Internet doesn't split the artist from their creations. It certainly provides more avenues for interpretation but it doesn't change anything about humanity's relationship with charting artists. Very few artists enjoy continued mainstream success, no matter how artistically valid their non-hit offerings are. To lay this at the feet of an inherently participatory culture that was previously limited to drunkenly bellowing their 75% correct karaoke interpretation or drunkenly performing a 75% correct interpretive dance is to take a few steps into elitist territory and chastise people for only liking the "hits." The tool set the Internet provides may bring a much wider variety of participation (and bring it much faster), but it's not anyone's "fault" that Carly Rae Jepsen's album isn't racking up hundreds of thousands of sales. That's simply the nature of pop culture. The phrase "15 minutes of fame" has been around since before you had an internet connection.

And while you're fitting the Internet for a Murder One charge, you might want to step back and consider that Jepsen's rise to superstardom, however brief, was largely due to this very same Internet. While it's true that the Internet wears many hats -- some white, some black -- you can't just hold it responsible for destroying artists and ignore its star-making power.

Re: Re: The power of the internet

The record studios did ivnent the one-hit wonder...but not intentionally.

Record studios like to take actual good content and spread it out by throwing in filler. By doing this they are able to keep artists alive (aka making money for the studio) longer. Seriously when was the last time you bought an ablum backed by a major recording studio and actually found more than 2-4 truly likeable and good songs? Usually it's 2-4 good songs and 8-9 tracks that range from indifferent to straight garbage.

Well what happens when someone releases a hit to start the flow...but then is unable to follow through with anything else that is actually a solidly good track?

You get the one hit wonder.

Acts that come out strong have a few songs (maybe even a good album) but after the inital boom wears off (as in the fans are hungry for the next hit) there is nothing to fill the void. Sure they may try to launch a "comeback" and sometimes it might work but usually it doesn't.

As a result you will see them on VH1, a reality show, or an infomercial.

If anything the internet has done some good for this process. With the internet hits are able to get circulated much faster than before and the parodies and imitations of these hits can circulate faster as well. You can see this over time. How many parodies of "Macarena" are there versus how many parodies of "Gangnam Style"?

The record studios don't have much value in parodies because they one don't inherently translate into success for the artist, two the studios try as they might aren't in control of what is parodied and how it is parodied, and three they don't necessarily profit from these parodies.

The internet alone cannot prevent the one hit wonder. The only way for that to happen is for the artist (and the studio) to actually release a regular stream of good content.

Re: Re: Re: The power of the internet

The modern one hit wonder doesn't come from the album era, they come from the singles era of the 50's and 60's. There are dozens of artists that had a single Top 40 hit and then nothing else. Some may have charted elsewhere, such as Top 100 or genre specific charts, but not the Top 40.

There are basically one hit wonders going back to the 1800's and probably even earlier, mainly various opera composers and singers that were very popular for a single piece and then never really heard of again.

Re: The power of the internet

As much as I thought the exact same thing, I would go one step further: Without the internet the song would probably still have been a one hit wonder, but with a far lower sale. The internet is troll-heaven: It takes some popular phenomenon and give it so much advertisement that the knowledge of the particular phenomenon is 100-1000 times larger than what money usually can buy. After this overexposure it will be almost impossible for the artist to keep the excitement up. As soon as the newsvalue of the memes fades away, the artist will start from almost scratch. Musicians see the internet as a strange creation with very random successes. However, it is a communication platform first, an advertisement machine second and a market-place third. Now use number one to tap into the potential of number two by informing about three and you are likely to turn more of the free advertisement into sale.

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You know what's funny?

I didn't even know who Carly Rae Jepsen is until this article. And until two weeks ago when I was riding in a coworker's car to lunch, I'd never even heard the song. I'd see the memes, of course, and I knew they were riffing on the lyrics of a pop song... But that's it.

Maybe the new album isn't doing well because she's just not particularly memorable as an artist? I learned who Jonathan Coulton was because someone shared a video of him playing Re: Your Brains with an audience at PAX, and the reason I was so taken in by his music was BOTH the fact the music was good and his incredible talent at connecting with his audience, as I was plainly able to see in the video.

CRJ may have come up with a cute, catchy pop ditty... But what did she do to build on that? What did she do to connect with the fans who were making her into a meme? Or did she just rush out a new album figuring that she had people's attention? If you want people to focus on you as an artist as opposed to just focusing on one of your songs, you need to give them a reason to do that!

PSY reposts people photoshopping Gangnam Style onto Malaysian McShaker bags via his official twitter account for cripes' sake! He fully embraced the memeing (is that a word?) and ran with it.

Never mind Gangnam Style is a better song than Call Me, Maybe in my never to be humble opinion...

Re: Re: Re: Your usage of "filicide", "homicide", "Murder One" is

Re: Re: Your usage of "filicide", "homicide", "Murder One" is

He evolved into seemingly formal English. But it's a hollow comment, shiny in the surface, devoid of substance in the inner part. I think we shouldn't even bother replying to such comments from now on. Just report them and move to people who actually read and want to discuss the article.

Re: Re: Re: Your usage of "filicide", "homicide", "Murder One" is

I totally agree. He rarely comments based on the article, just the title. He almost never replies to have a discussion of any value whatsoever.

I like the occasional zinger, or rant, but ootb is nothing more than a troll and should be treated as such. No response, report, move on. At least until such time as he actually attempts a discussion based on the article, without a personal vendetta...

I just wanted to point out that there's a small error in your story. To explain, I'll regale you with a story while I do my morning exercise routine to insure testicular fortitude of my globular man butter breweries.

Carly, much like Ashless Simpson, became the target of my sensuously dangerous affections. One consequence that seems to affect most starlets who gaze upon the voluptuous trunk of my yogurt gun is the tendency to lose their fame in a fortnight. Unfortunately, the fame erodes even faster if they take a ride on the infamous "Zimmer Baloney Pony."

So, it is most depressing that young Carly has lost her privilege of fame, though maybe the world is beginning to realize that vapid lyrics and a flashy hipster garb are not items conducive with popularity.

I'll tell what is conducive with popularity...A Pronto Uomo vest and a pair of jeans from The Men's Wearhouse. Timberlake wears it, and he likes the way he looks. I guarantee it.

Who?

I can't help it.
I've been a musician for 40 years, never had or even wanted a "hit".
I've had a lot of fun though and I figure that anyone that has made any money at all is pretty lucky.
Just think in 30 years she can join a reunion tour and be nostalgic with a bunch of other one hit wonders.

I don't know of any group that pulled off more internet entertainment bubbles than Ok,Go. It was amazing they did it multiple times, but even after just a few they were unable to keep ahead of the internet's insatiable hunger for cat videos.

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Check out the career arc of the Arctic Monkeys. A little punk band playing in clubs in the UK had no idea how many worldwide fans they had, all because of someone uploading live clips of their gigs to YouTube.

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If the conclusion is that the Internet is responsible for her rise and "fall," who or what do we blame for all the one hit wonders before the internet was the medium for music discovery? The radio, TV, record stores, the RIAA?

OMG, the vibration of sound waves in the air led to the rise and fall of all previous artists! We must boycott sound!

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You, sir, made the little engineer inside me laugh out loud. And it reminds me of my teacher telling us a story of a trainee that insisted that he needed all the water contained in the Pacific Ocean to use in a heat exchanger for a mid-sized distilling tower. Which made my inner engineer laugh again.

Re:

I think it has to be blamed mainly on 1) the album not being released until MONTHS after "Call My Maybe" had come and gone, and 2) the rest of the album not being as good (or, at least, catchy) as the single. No conspiracy theory, it just wasn't very special.

Re: Re: Re: Hats?

I find it easier just to assume that everyone's an FBI agent.

Random anonymous commenter? FBI agent.
Person signed in with a witty username? FBI agent.
Nathan Fillion doing an AMA on Reddit, with pictures and confirmation from his Twitter? Oh cool, when did the FBI hire Nathan Fillion?

But the meme's not about Jepsen; it's about her song, and she is secondary...

Yeah, exactly. And more specifically it's about the people doing things with that meme. They make videos, remixes, etc. because they think it's cool, because their friends will like it, because they want to appear on the front page of some pop blog.

They're not doing it to please Jepsen. They don't really care about Jepsen - she's just not that big a part of their lives. They're doing it for themselves, and to expect them to put Jepsen's interests ahead of their own, particularly at the behest of some writer in a music mag, is frankly ridiculous.

Leave Right Said Fred alone!

They had a number of hits, just not in the US. But then, they're a UK group. Richard Fairbrass has turned into more of a TV person in recent years anyway, doing things like late-night TV and pop quizes (his appearances on Never Mind the Buzzcocks are some of the reasons it gained such popularity, and can get the likes of Ne-Yo, Alice Cooper and Josh Groban to host it (all 3 have in recent times)

I think the key example of how he matured though, is that he presented a gameshow where you ended up actually making gold ingots in the Jordanian desert as both the final challenge, and your prize (The Desert Forges).

And yes, I've heard the first two Right Said Fred albums, my sister had them. They're not bad, actually. Still not a patch on Hawkwind.

There are more fractions than integers.

Anyone know 'Pachelbel's Canon'? I bet you don't know any of his other compositions - without that one tune he would be utterly unknown. (He died in 1760, so probably wasn't the internet that 'killed him')

It occurred to me last night that there might well be another reason behind the "low" sales of the album - the real problem with the modern music industry's sales, unbundling.

Now, this is just guesswork as I don't know how the "less than 100,000" sales were actually counted, but I would guess that they're counting full album sales and not individual track downloads. But, it occurs to me that most people have gotten quite used to the idea that artists with one catchy song tend to have an album full of filler or songs that aren't represented by the single. So, a lot of people who would previously have blind bought an album based ona single will now preview the whole thing - and then only buy the tracks they actually want.

So, one question is this: how many tracks off the album actually sold individually? Does the 100,000 include that number, or are we talking those sales along with another 200,000 downloads of Call Me Maybe from the album, another 190,000 of another track, another 180,000 of another track, etc?

In other words, are we actually looking at a situation where people enjoyed the first hit but opted not to try the album, or is it that the album only had 3 decent songs on it and people bought those instead of the whole thing? Either way, this is neither unprecedented nor a real problem - as stated above she had her 15 minutes and missed the chance to extend it for whatever reason - but it would be interesting to know.